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Janet Public Access

Jisc members have a requirement to fulfil their business and community engagement remit and asked Jisc to find a solution that would allow them to offer public access to the Internet via the Janet network.

The Janet network is classified as a private one and therefore is exempt from some legislation that affects networks that allow public access (in particular to retain data about use of the network, to report to regulators on resilience and security and, in future, to deal in prescribed ways with misuse by our users and their equipment).

Jisc identified a solution that provides public access to the Internet in a manner that our members are able to utilise and that does not put at risk the status and working practice of the rest of Jisc.

To achieve this Jisc partnered with The Cloud, one of the UK’s leading public WiFi providers. The non-exclusive agreement allows Janet-connected organisations to deliver public access to anyone who wishes to get online using site infrastructure, and is not authenticated by any other means e.g corporate systems or Eduroam. The solution utilises the existing Janet network infrastructure to pass this traffic, but in a way that meets the operational and regulatory requirements incumbent on customer sites and Janet. This agreement has been in place since late October 2013.

Summary of regulatory and operational considerations

The point to point tunnel must be established from the Janet customer's premises to an internet access provider (for example a commercial ISP) with whom the customer has an agreement

The tunnel must be encrypted between it's endpoints, so that no traffic from members of the public is carried on the Janet network in plaintext form

Users of the service must be authenticated, either by the Janet customer, or its partner internet access provider

Traffic from members of the public, when routed to the public internet, must be identified as originating from the partner internet access provider, not from Janet or the customer

The customer and the internet access provider are responsible for compliance with any relevant laws and policies applying to public internet access, such as logging and filtering.

More details about the provision of guest and public access can be found here: